Let's look at one company. It has an owner and ten workers. The workers make things, serve customers, write code, drive trucks — they do the actual work that produces value.
Each worker produces €100 of value per day. Together, that's €1,000 of value — goods made, services delivered, work done.
The company brought in €1,000 of value today. Now it gets divided up:
The workers produced all €1,000 of value. They received €400. The owner — who did not produce the goods — received €400.
The split as a fraction of value produced:
Ten people did all the work. One person collected the same amount as all ten combined.
This isn't a broken company. This isn't a greedy boss. This is how the model works. The difference between what workers produce and what they're paid is, by definition, profit.
For profit to exist, workers must be paid less than the value they create. If they were paid the full value, profit would be zero. No profit means the company can't repay its loans — remember Chapter 1.
This is not about fairness or greed. It's structural. The gap between what you produce and what you earn is not a flaw in the system. It is the system.
In Chapter 1, we saw that more money is owed than exists. Someone has to generate the extra money to cover the interest. Where does it come from?
It comes from here. From the gap between what workers produce and what they're paid. Profit services debt. And since debt always grows (because of interest), profit must always grow too. Which means the gap must widen — or new workers must be added, or they must produce more for the same pay.
Debt demands interest. Interest demands profit.
Profit demands a gap between work and wages.
The system doesn't exploit workers because bosses are cruel.
It exploits workers because the math requires it.
Pay workers more. See what happens to profits — and to the company's ability to survive.
Profit is not a reward for cleverness or risk. It is the difference between the value workers create and the wages they receive. This gap isn't optional — it's what keeps the entire system running.
The debt from Chapter 1 demands profit. Profit demands underpaying labor. This is not a policy choice. It's the architecture.